Wonder is Not Kid's Stuff

I won't valorize my cooing, gazing eight-month-old daughter as the exemplar of wonder. That would be too easy. And it may not be accurate. It certainly would not be constructive to encourage responsible adults to mimic the habits of a doe-eyed infant. In fact, I'll just come out and say it: Wonder is not kid's stuff. It turns out that it might be rather adult stuff.

True, I've been on the tracks of wonder since a tow-headed boy. At 17, 18 years old, I secretly desired to keep alive what then I could only call "imagination." To stay on wonder's tracks partially drove me to devote much of my adult life to being a writer, to teaching writing, and to mentoring writers around the country. In fact, a capacity for wonder probably led me to blend the ancient art of Yoga's philosophies and practices with my creative writing process, to pen a book about that yoking, and to show other writers ways to weave Yoga and writing.

The daggers, slings, and arrows of adult life have not led me astray. Just the opposite. During the past six years amidst a divorce, a new marriage, the purchase of a farm house, a lightning-inspired fire of said house that decimated my study and library and also left us out of home for 15 months, two bouts of debilitating Lyme Disease plus a small dose of depression, not to mention the arrival of a little girl named Dahlia who has summarily rearranged my life - I have been deliberately on wonder's scent more than ever.

Wonder has been a reliable - dare I say, "awe-some" - ally in learning to live in, not escape from, this world. I am learning how to navigate crises and periods of "fertile confusion" - those moments when identity, reality, in short a personal "world" are in flux. I've picked up a few tools and tricks to lure it to my living quarters - my study, kitchen, living room, bedroom -however fleeting its visits.

The results? Well, I'm not a silly, skipping Peter Pan of a man who insists we have birthday parties every day. Wonder is quieter than that. Something, though, has shifted in my perception. I respond more than react to all the crap that inevitably "happens." Those shifts coupled with my innate curiosity and concern for other human beings are enough to keep me on its tracks and to keep living in some key questions.

What is wonder exactly? Is it just a phenomenon or trick of the eyes? Can adults actually cultivate something so ethereal? Why do we have so many misconceptions of what it is? What's it for? Those questions these past few years have sent me many places in search of this seemingly ubiquitous yet elusive emotion: to tour with an archaeologist through what may well be North America's largest and oldest cave art and rock shelter art sites; to India where members of the longest living Yoga tradition, Kashmir Shaivism, have "spelunkered" through the mind's darkest caves; to the Texas Panhandle to sniff out what a young Georgia O'Keeffe might have felt during two seminal years that shaped her artistic vision; to a Peruvian shaman who visits upstate New York that I might glimpse for myself the beatitudes and sublime terrors that William Blake and William James and Walt Whitman and my other literary heroes had experienced and so dutifully had come back to tell about.

Those experiences corroborated much of my research and studies. Socrates talks with a young geometry student named Theaetetus. Descartes corresponds with a young princess of Bohemia. Pam Houston advises her undergrad writing students at UC-Davis. At the heart of all these teachers' observations is, yes, wonder. Respectively: Wonder is the beginning of all wisdom. Wonder is the first of all passions. Wonder is the beginning of all writing. Wisdom, emotions, and creativity - all borne from wonder.

And wonder in the East? In short, the Tao Te Ching's author suggests that when we recognize both the external world of, say, paper cups and bird feeders and the internal world of ideas and images as the same, then we enter a portal of wonder, the wonder of wonders. The yogic teacher Abhinavagupta essentially says the same thing: When we experience the dream world of impressions and the waking world of objects as the same, we are in the space of wonder. And to pause in that space, the teacher suggests, is the heart of Yoga. From Greece to the Netherlands to California to China to India, wonder matters.

A handful of psychologists are picking up the crumbs these teachers have left behind. A few biologists have insisted scientists restore wonder before it's too late for the planet. Some religious thinkers have called for its revival if religion is to be relevant this century. At least one academic has called upon humanities professors to renew its place on college campuses to save higher education from the marketplace of gadgetry. None of these people are speaking to Dahlia or her crawling play-date friends. They're reaching out to you and me.

My two-part hypothesis is simple on the face of it. Part one: To cultivate wonder can benefit how we adults relate. To our minds and our bodies. Our sense of self and Self. Our loved ones. Strangers. Other animals. Plants. Work. Problems and crises.

Part two: Wonder may be the responsible - not childish, Alice-ish - emotional experience for us adults in the 21st century to learn to identify and cultivate.

Yes, wonder can be tracked. But it cannot be pinned down, caged, and analyzed (well, I guess it can, but that's not my endeavor). On this blog, we'll track it that we may come to recognize, appreciate, and understand it in all of its many forms and guises, and also invite it into our lives. Not to hunt it down and kill it. For at the heart of this wondering about wonder is a constant play between knowing and not-knowing, between figuring out and then surrendering again to the circuitous, fish hooked, umbrella-shaped question mark.

Yes, it can be seen in the eyes and clearly lives in the hearts of children. Almost daily, I wonder, how can I get back that lust for life that my daughter has so naturally? I want what she has. Her energy. That spontaneous joy and curiosity that comes through her every morning upon waking. She even influences the adults in her life by just being around, because it's such a pure light and many of us - myself included - have lost the scent, at have at least have been derailed for long periods of time. I'm keeping that question on the front burner of my mind as I go through my current healing challenges - both physical and psychological, and other life challenges that can so often feel like a burden.

I try to assume that "IT" (that state of wonder) is here for all of us to come back to, and to help perhaps - reinvigorate? - our once natural state of wholeness and our sense of well-being. I wish to become more motivated - and to alter my perception of - in order to face those adult challenges with grace. To stay on course to come back to this state called wonder, in order to be happy, alive, have more life to give to others and enjoy the everyday little gifts those challenges bring with them if I'm paying attention.

Thank you Jeff, for this blog and your inspired writing - I plan to visit often.

A change to ponder, this idea of wonder. Einstein said: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” And it was Bob Dylan who said in a 2001 interview in Rolling Stone, "Things will have to change. And one of these things that will have to change: People will have to change their internal world." I really love the idea of this blog, and I am really looking forward to reading it!

Syncronistically, I go to relieve myself in the local library's restroom and discover a five year old wonder, turning with explosing hands, the funnel of her new kaleidoscope. SHe is rapt in this wonder, of one shift of that funnel, and its yield of another mandala of colours, shapes..... Her name is Katie and her nanny, Anya, has just gifted her with this instrument of encouragement, and yet, her nannay is on the wings of air, returning to Austria, as we speak. So I sense Katie is wondering about her precious Anya and yet overtaken my the momentous miracle of kaleidoscope, a shifting of hand and a seeing of an entirely differing view.

Anya is gone and yet the kaleidoscope is here. She is missed and yet the gift has given Katie another experience of the preciousness of change.

Suddenly, Mom bursts into the washroom withan anxious,"Where were you? I told you....!" Another wondering moment, with what is her view right here and now.

Opportunity to deeply listen: "Ah, Mommy and Katie are both missing Anya!" And two 3 year twin boys turn the same binoculars in two different directions towards this wondering Granny. One looks through the binoculars from narrowness to width, while the other views from width to narrowness. All three blessed siblings have objects from ANya through which to view change. WHat a thoughtful gifting upon her departure.

Soon we have Mommy holding a weeping Katie and a sorrowful Mommy, all in the wonder of missing this mysterious one who left a legacy of how to view for three little ones.

Choices are birthed of this moment. Mommy sees that perhaps dance class and perhaps "being late" is not what this moment is birthing. Perhaps it is about the sharing of grief, the culmination of just letting go, having gotten the Anya to the plane on time. ANd so surrender yields this intimacy of common sadness. No one is wrong. No harm has been done here. There is no other dance class to go to but the one spun by the charm of an affectionate Nanny, a class of its own. A dance of such divinity.

And I wonder at the werewithall of such an ANya Nanny that Granny is now witnessing this wetpetalled unfoldment of family, two sturdy three year old boys splendidly binoculared, unbereft and supportive of Mommy, and a lapped five year old, finally knowing, she is not guilty, simply saddened by this loss.

And so the library and its new fairy books draw Katie's heart to them, to imagine another world, another view, perhaps one into which she can dream Anya on the way to AUstria and always remember the love she shared.

Having experienced two amazing "miracles" out of the blue lately, I'm more attuned to wonder in my life than I have been for some time. Trusting in the wonder of the universe can be an island of serenity in the busy "to-do" list of our lives. Jeff, I'm going to go on a "wonder walk" soon and remember your voice at St. Mark's last month leading our boys and teachers through the experience of encountering reality with openness and joy. Thanks for the blog.

Thank you for each of your replies. Happy wondering this spring, Cindy. Tom and Emily, your responses remind me how much we view wonder as something lost, of a gone era, of some time in our idealized past. Namely, childhood. It does fade. But it also can assume, as we grow older, much richer, deeper hues.

Emily, I love your open expression of your yearning: "I want what she has. Her energy. That spontaneous joy and curiosity that comes through her every morning upon waking." Your longing reminds me of writer Ellen Gilchrist. In her journals, she observes something very similar: "I know a lot of two-year-olds who have genius. They are terribly observant, absolutely curious, willing to take risks....How to hold on to that native genius and also learn the things we need to survive." Ah, precisely, I say. How can we adults live in this world with wonder? In fact, how could wonder help us survive? There's a question to live in.

Consider what Charles Baudelaire writes in an essay circa the late 1800s about modern art: "Genius is the capacity to retrieve childhood at will."

So, perhaps in tracking wonder, we aim not so much revive our childhood or to retrieve anything from the past as much as create an even deeper, more resonant wonder - deeper because of our increased awareness, deeper because of our other experiences as an adult that two-year-olds lack.

Kaarina, wow - what a day in the bathroom. What is most remarkable about your story is not the children in wonder with the kaleidoscope and binoculars but the adult observer - you! - who is in wonder with all of the others. You absorbed them, felt them, and allowed wonder to arrive in a public bathroom. Congratulations.

I look forward to more comments. By the way, the button at the top right-hand corner lets you subscribe to this blog so you can receive updates to it: Subscribe to Tracking Wonder/ * Subscribe via RSS.

Eileen: Thanks for those two appropriate quotations. Einstein and Dylan - both legendary figures who spawned their own revolutions in consciousness. One wondering about the cosmos; the other, about the nuances of love and faith and meaning. "Whatever colors you have in your mind - I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine."

Yes, it does seem that to track wonder we can go out into the literal woods in search of a red-tufted Pileated Woodpecker whose sudden song or nose-battle with a hollowed willow might surprise us into wonder. And we can venture into the woods within and shift the very lenses through which we see the world. Such lens adjustment might be the focus for the next blog.

Lynne: What a delight to track wonder with the boys of St. Mark's School of Texas earlier this month. Their willingness to surrender adolescent self-consciousness should inspire all of us. "Miracles"! Nice. "mira-" - from the Latin, "wonder."

Last March, while recuperating from a partial knee replacement I spent loads of time on my sun porch. I always had a book with me, but mostly I looked out the windows at the trees in the back yard. I had never really noticed them before. Oh sure I knew they were there, the Bartlett Pear Trees, the Weeping Willows, the Oak and Maple. But now I really noticed the details. My eyes sought the bursting bulbs on branches, and willed them to open. I traced the evergreen bushes’ color from deep forest green to the new shoots of gentle grass green. Everywhere I looked I saw intimations of the spring and summer to come. I really looked and with a sense of wonder understood that these changes came each year, but it was this year when an enforced rest had me on my screened-in-porch, that I really saw it happening right in front of me for the first time.

Jeff - you've said so many important things here. Of particular interest to me is, "I respond more than react to all the crap that inevitably 'happens.'" One of the big differences between adults and children is that there is a lot more crap that happens and has happened by the time we reach adulthood. We could allow ourselves to become bogged down by all of this. We could allow our energies to be diverted emotionally to the bad stuff that happens to such an extent that it saps our sense of wonder. Even a naive expectation for perfection or for constant happiness could interfere with ones ability to retain wonder through the realities of life. But learning how to navigate through the rough patches with clarity - that allows us to come out on the other side with our wonder still intact. To me this is the big difference between adult wonder and childhood wonder. We live through divorce and fire and lyme disease (with the knowledge that more crap is coming), and if we have retained our wonder, it's not as innocent as childhood wonder, but in many ways it's richer. The issue sort of reminds me of that great poem about wonder, "The Fish," by Elizabeth Bishop. Adult wonder is like that fish, with hooks, leader and fishline through the jaw but still wanting to live, swimming through the waters of life with those lines and hooks trailing behind like "medals with their ribbons"(to quote Bishop). Thanks for making me think about this. The thing I love about all of your writings - what characterizes them for me is your deep commitment to truth. You never take the easy way out and ignore the pieces that might not fit into a perfect theory - you examine a subject in all of its haze and complexity and often, paradoxically, discover simplicity and clarity. That is a gift worthy of wonder!

Jeff - you've said so many important things here. Of particular interest to me is, "I respond more than react to all the crap that inevitably 'happens.'" One of the big differences between adults and children is that there is a lot more crap that happens and has happened by the time we reach adulthood. We could allow ourselves to become bogged down by all of this. We could allow our energies to be diverted emotionally to the bad stuff that happens to such an extent that it saps our sense of wonder. Even a naive expectation for perfection or for constant happiness could interfere with ones ability to retain wonder through the realities of life. But learning how to navigate through the rough patches with clarity - that allows us to come out on the other side with our wonder still intact. To me this is the big difference between adult wonder and childhood wonder. We live through divorce and fire and lyme disease (with the knowledge that more crap is coming), and if we have retained our wonder, it's not as innocent as childhood wonder, but in many ways it's richer. The issue sort of reminds me of that great poem about wonder, "The Fish," by Elizabeth Bishop. Adult wonder is like that fish, with hooks, leader and fishline through the jaw but still wanting to live, swimming through the waters of life with those lines and hooks trailing behind like "medals with their ribbons"(to quote Bishop). Thanks for making me think about this. The thing I love about all of your writings - what characterizes them for me is your deep commitment to truth. You never take the easy way out and ignore the pieces that might not fit into a perfect theory - you examine a subject in all of its haze and complexity and often, paradoxically, discover simplicity and clarity. That is a gift worthy of wonder!

Esther: While leading a retreat at Kripalu Center last spring, I asked the group what words and phrases came up when I said, "wonder." One of them said, "fresh eyes." I think that's what your situation connotes, too. Amidst physical hardship, you slowed down enough to let your eyes become refreshed. Refreshing the eyes is a foundational tool to track the sweet creature called wonder. Thanks for sharing your beautiful reflection. - Jeffrey

I really responded to your reply about my "Really Looking" Fresh Eyes is so right! And it seems that in this time of my life, my eyes get fresher as I get older. It's a real phenomenon of aging. I literally see things anew - people, family, relationships, and of course myself.
The wonder of it is to me, is how I've stretched myself to link with my creative self, first through writing and now through performing. I feel in my element, it feels so right and natural.

I think to myself as I bend down to smell the crocuses in my garden, take this in, really smell the sweetness, see how the petals wind around, and are so distinct - fresh eyes, indeed!

Yesterday driving down 375 towards town I was struck with a swath of sunlight raked across one part of Overlook, and amidst the new green, there was this patch of yellow/brown. I couldn't understand the color, my fresh eyes couldn't make sense of this strange color, and I was struck again by the infinestimable beauty of it all.

At this time in my life looking with fresh eyes allows me to live in each moment - to be here, looking and filled with wonder.

Your eyes very likely might be coming "more to life" than they have in years. You've slowed down your life's outer pace, and you're enriching your inner life by tending to what brings joy, pleasure, creativity - all activities that at once can relax the eye muscles and, as I'll mention in the next post, expand peripheral vision.

In fact, you've inspired me to mention in the next post a neuroscientist who, with some deliberate activity, literally changed her brain's gray matter and her vision (defying "common" medical wisdom).

Oh, I do love it when I'm inspired- Your words on wonder inspire me and remind me to stop and listen to the daffodils hum. I believe that wonder is the acknowledgement of the Divine- that the miracles that surround us every breath are here to be noticed. I picture God saying yes-s-s-s when I note that the periwinkle in the rock wall is a different shade of blue than the violets by the steps and that the earthworms have a work ethic that is a lesson for us all. There's a line in one of Mary Oliver's poems: "Stop and listen," said a voice.

Your article reminded me to do just that. Thank you, thank you for writing it.

Melissa: I've been discovering so many key distinctions between a child's wonder and an adult's potential wonder; you have summed up some crucial ones: "Even a naive expectation for perfection or for constant happiness could interfere with ones ability to retain wonder through the realities of life." Right. Expectation of perfection - disastrous. And although I am not advocating that we try to be in wonder continuously, wonder - unlike happiness and unlike joy - does lurk in the margins in times of delight and in times of despair.

"But learning how to navigate through the rough patches with clarity - that allows us to come out on the other side with our wonder still intact. To me this is the big difference between adult wonder and childhood wonder. We live through divorce and fire and lyme disease (with the knowledge that more crap is coming), and if we have retained our wonder, it's not as innocent as childhood wonder, but in many ways it's richer." Yes, Melissa, you summed up the distinction beautifully.

Thank you for the reminder of Bishop's poem. It's been several years since I've read it, but this morning I will retrieve it and read it with fresh eyes. The tail of complexity - not the same as complication - loops around to the mouth of simplicity. That's a paradox, and borderline wonder, most babes and children cannot fully appreciate.

What a rich responsibility we have, then, to embrace this deeper wonder. Perhaps, children will follow the model into adulthood.

I love that line, Tammy. It reminds me of something small and wondrous that happened a few years ago. One morning, I took a yoga mat out to a meadow near where I live and prepared to practice some Sun Salutations in the morning sun. I bent down in a standing forward bend and suddenly a tiny writhing thing seized me. I "stopped and listened." Here's part of what emerged that morning:

Earthworm Lumbricus terrestris

“It may be doubted whether there are many other creatures which have played so important a part in the history of the world.” –Charles Darwin, 1881

Morning vermicelli for that big-bellied Robin,
angler’s treasure to hook the big catch,
what do you feed on?
Soul food seeker,
you eat as you go,
the leafy debris of your path
feeding your fingery vermilion body,
your little setae writhing
you to the beat of earth’s drum,
earth’s strum along your
cellular ear.

Who among us knows earth
the way you do,
soil lover, your blood wine hue
so deep no wonder your moist body
feels its mate in earth’s wet
innards, you who move
with a blind knowing into the underworld.

Okay! The weather in the Hudson Valley is gorgeous this morning. It's time to get out into the woods. See you there.

Thank you for starting this blog. For me tracking wonder is about staying present in the moment, staying mindful. After surviving a brutal violent attack in 1987 and being told by my surgeon my surviving was a miracle, I learned (and have to remind myself daily) that no matter how hard life is or will be, it is up to me to slow down, stay present, and be aware of the miracles of the world that are right in front of me all the time. I can lose my sense of wonder if I find myself obsessing about the past or worrying about the future. What comes to mind for me is the story of how Zen Buddhism began when the Buddha silently held up a lotus blossom and without saying a word Bodhidharma immediately understood. To me that story is a powerful lesson to stay present in the here and now, so that I can cut through the all of my troubles and marvel at something simple and beautiful right in front of my eyes: the small brown speckled egg I found in my back yard, the way my cat so elegantly cleans his face, the amazing shape and intricacy of a spider web in some dark corner of my house.

I agree with what you say: "I can cut through all of my troubles and marvel at something so simple and beautiful right in front of my eyes." That capacity to "cut through" and marvel is remarkable in us humans. It's not about ignoring nor minimizing the trauma; in due time, it is about re-creating our self and our reality by watching where the inner eye and the outer one rest. (More on this in the next post, I think.)

It is amazing that we stifle our childrens' creativity by putting them in front of a television or video game and wonder why they cannot make up their own games. Cultivating the images in their heads and helping them become creative should be a desire of all parents and grandparents.